With awe-struck thought and pitying tears, I view that noble, stately dome Where Scotia’s kings of other years, Fam’d heroes, had their royal home. Alas! how changed the times to come! Their royal name low in the dust! Their hapless race wild-wandering roam, Tho’ rigid law cries out,’twas just! Though the train made a toilsome way and interrupted progress, with steam sweepers ahead of it, the city soon faded away. The eye could not long pierce that forest of descending veils of snow, the sepulchre would soon be accomplished, and the spectators shuddered at the thought of those voluntarily immured and hapless wretches, who had seized this chance for a few hours’ reckless pleasure, and then--their own death, murdered by each other’s hand in the furious combat for survival, or choked with the many fingers of the frost at their necks. And Leacraft remained at the window still looking, while Sir John patiently waited, staring at his map, or raising his eyes expectantly to Leacraft, to resume his attention. A bitter thought passed through Leacraft’s mind. Edinburgh had been faithless. Dressed in beauty, rich in reputation, nurtured in elegance and culture, she had been wickedly selfish. Her streets were filled with embruted men and women, with the vassals of drink and depravity; her picturesque quarters hid misery and vulgar need, unsanitary and simply mean corners of wretchedness, filled with creatures to whom life was an uneasy mixture of sleep and drunkenness. She had done nothing for these. Her life was part of the life of the whole kingdom, and the word of that life was selfishness, the stupid adhesion to conventional usage which kept the land from the people, which loaded taxes and rents upon a slaving many, for the perpetuation of an indulgent and luxurious life to the few. The upper surfaces of society, brilliant and dazzlingly sleek with pride, and puffed up with the vanity of knowledge, cushioned upon a contemptuous forgetfulness of duty, of sympathy, conceitedly viewing their reflections in Burke’s Peerage, or Chalmer’s Landed Gentry, begrudging every concession to modern sense of justice, denying the equality of men, fostering the silly homage of their inferiors, and rankly gathering around the idiocy of a futile monarchy. It was a class life, a class gospel, a class cultus, the arrogance of a classification of the humans of society, which made the joy of the world the prerogative of those who by birth or fortune found themselves foreordained to possess it, and who now--God willing--would fight every inch of their vantage ground to keep that advantage, believing that a fine suavity of demeanor, a generous support of fashion, a supercilious deference to education as an aristocratic embellishment, a pretentious clemency of judgement and an unfailing church attendance, would save them before any supernatural tribunal--if indeed such a tribunal existed--of particular blame. Those among them